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Sociology: The Six Adopter Types

2008/04/30 — grant czerepak

I’ve finished reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and came away with one picture in my head. That is the type of adopters of any new product or service goes through as it reaches its tipping point and beyond. I’ll share that with you now:

The pattern can be described as follows:

The Maven (expert) is a creative adopter

The Connector (leader) is a creative adopter

The Salesman (logician) is an innovative adopter

The Accountant (physicist) is an innovative adopter

The Secretary (security) is an intelligent adopter

The Receptionist (operator) is an intelligent adopter

The first three adopt because the epidemic is contagious, the second three adopt because the epidemic is sticky. It should be noted that the names I give the adopters is contextually sensitive. Malcolm points out that in one context a person can be a Maven, in another an Secretary and in another a Salesman. This involves the transitive memory roles within groups, the message (datum) and the media (node).

All in all I consider The Tipping Point a thought provoking book worth reading, along with Malcolm’s other book Blink.